Sarah Sentilles

A gripping and very personal collection of ruminations, memories, and lessons learned about the responsibility art has to violence and trauma, and what it means to be a pacifist in a world where war seems both inevitable and endless. Sarah Sentilles' style elevates the book, almost poetically tying together complex themes and personal observances about her own journey navigating the ideas she presents.

Who said sexism is dead???? In this book, the author interviews ministers of different Christian religions and discovers that despite being ordained, the female clergy is still low (wo)man on the totem pole. There is still a fight against sexism. The ordained women have to jump through more hoops, prove themselves more, than if their male counterparts.

The author goes on to interview, also, gay and transgender women and discuss their issues in their churches.

The most interesting chapter to show more me, a Catholic, was the chapter on Catholic Women Priests. While their ordination is valid, the Vatican has ex-communicated them! What is that about???? I need to talk to someone about this.

I have not felt that involved, nor moved by a book in a long time. I am newly informed, but also angry. show less

Like Craig Thompson's "Blankets" and Madeleine L'Engle's "Ring of Endless Light," this book and its protagonist's struggle with faith and religion resonates with me on so many levels. Sentilles, who grew up in the church and spent many years studying theology and the ministry, evaluates her relationship with Christianity as if examining a personal romantic relationship, from the initial infatuation to the “going steady,” the highlighting of differences and the eventual parting. She show more raises many of the questions that have been tossed around amongst others my age — the divergence between the human concept of God and what God is; the alignment of churches with politics and government; the fallibility of doctrine and heresy; the manipulation of scripture and spiritual authority. She addresses Christianity through the lens of various theologians, historians, thinkers, and writers, taking their views and perspectives on faith and examining them in comparison and contrast to her slowly developing personal views. And although I find myself still somewhere in the midst of these, Sentilles’ conclusions and eventual separation from organized Christianity also strikes a chord with me. show less

Through a dazzling assembly of memoir, history, reportage, visual culture, literature, and theology, Sarah Sentilles constructs a harrowing yet beautifully moving collage that portrays the making of art as a powerful response to making war and of a life lived by peace and principle. She tells the true stories of a conscientious objector during WW1, and a former prison guard at Abu Ghraib, challenging conventional thinking about how violence is waged, witnessed, and resisted.